‘Only people to pay for RHI are boiler owners’

Counsel for boiler owners challenging the reduction in annual subsidies claimed previous judicial assessments of the case did not properly consider the financial impact on their livelihoods.

Gerald Simpson QC also argued that no-one apart from his clients have paid for the catalogue of flaws in the failed green energy initiative.

He said: “This was just error, after error, after error (and) the only people who suffered from this were the individual applicants. No civil servants suffered, no civil servant was ever disciplined in any way, shape or form.”

Members of the Renewable Heat Association NI Ltd and Co Antrim poultry farmer Thomas Forgrave are taking separate cases against the Department for the Economy over legislative changes introduced in 2017 and again in 2019.

The revised RHI regulations saw annual payments to non-domestic operators slashed from £13,000 to £2,000.

Boiler owners claim that was an unlawful step taken against operators who signed up to the initiative in 2012 after being given a cast-iron guarantee that the rate of return on their investments was “grandfathered”, or guaranteed, for 20 years.

Set up to encourage businesses and other non-domestic users to switch to environmentally friendly wood pellet burning systems, the RHI scheme was plunged into controversy after the potential cost to taxpayers emerged.

Because subsidies were higher than fuel costs it became known as “cash for ash” and was closed to new entrants in 2016.

The debacle led to the fall of Stormont’s power-sharing administration in 2017, and a public inquiry which identified a series of failings but found no evidence of illegal activity.

Mr Forgrave’s case was dismissed after it emerged that he has received more than £1.1m in payments over a seven-year period for an outlay of just over £500,000.

Appealing those rulings, counsel insisted insufficient weight was given to the adverse impact of the legislative changes on boiler operators.

The Court of Appeal heard how Mr Forgrave borrowed hundreds of thousands of pounds to install biomass boilers at his farm and faced financial uncertainty.

“The extent of the losses, the fact of restructuring of the bank loan because he couldn’t meet repayments, all of that is just glossed over,” Mr Simpson contended. The hearing continues.